Sequential COP won't start.... arrgh

[The Aspirator]

Mike, Ken, hheeeeellllpp mmmeeeeeeeeeeee!!!111

(ninja edit, IT RUNS!) Jump to post 26.

This is not a how to article (more like a how not to! haha), I'm saving that for later. This is just a quickie feeler for any ideas as to what is wrong.

I finally finished the sequential coil on plug project that I've been working on for 10 months, but the darn thing won't start after 10 days of working on it (most of which I've spent fiddling and cranking).

I'll start with what works. MS v2.2 board, hires10d2 code, home made VR sensor conditioning circuit and 2nd trigger input. Right now I actually have the car running perfectly using the 36-1 trigger wheel (mounted with Dale's pulley) and ford VR sensor on a home made bracket. Spark output A is driving the bosch 139 ignition module, which fires off my MSD coil, then to the dizzy cap then plugs. With the basic suggested wheel decoder settings and a 60* trigger angle I'm getting PERFECT timing.



The second I try to drive my chevy camaro LS1 coils all hell breaks loose. My timing goes all over the place, sometimes on track, sometimes waaay off (probably 180* out), sometimes -60*ish or +60ish. I've modded my dizzy and I KNOW that the circuit is outputting 5v when a vane is present, 0v when not, and this 5v is going to MS pin 11. The engine cranks for a few revolutions, then the timing light starts flickering, it'll catch and sputter then KERCHUNK, it'll stop dead and spin backwards for a fraction of a second.

I've even tried wasted spark, tying 1+4 and 2+3 outputs together, same deal. This rules out the dizzy being a problem, at least for now. And the fact that it runs perfectly off the VR sensor when using a dizzy cap and single coil means that the VR sensor functions perfectly. I tried different dwell settings, but no dice. Jutny is using these coils as well (we bought the same batch and split them) and he's got 3.0ms cranking, 2.3ms running, 0.1ms whatever the last one is. And that coincides with what I've read about these coils on msefi.com. So THAT should be right.

I'm getting plenty hot spark from them too, it's great. They do fire in 1,3,4,2 order, I've checked it many times and even confirmed it with a video camera and slow motion playback (don't let me forget to post it sometime!). But I'm not ruling out that somehow the firing order is getting effed up.

It just seems like when I switch to multiple coils, the VR sensor stops reading consistently. I've tried everything I can think of for many many days and I'm not really getting anywhere. I'm super glad that the thought came to me to run the car with VR+single coil+distributor cap, cause that works great, now I can at least drive my car again. And of course I chopped up my dizzy for sequential so I can't revert back to simple MSnS.

Anyways, enough ranting for one night. Please feel free to ask my any question, even if it seems stupid or obvious.

Thanks!
John

Here's some piccies:

[245gti]

I'm no expert but it looks like a lot of clearance on that VR sensor. Is it within spec in terms of proximity to the trigger wheel? The bracket looks solid enough...

[adrianpike]

Originally Posted by 245gti

I'm no expert but it looks like a lot of clearance on that VR sensor. Is it within spec in terms of proximity to the trigger wheel? The bracket looks solid enough...

It's easily a half mil closer than mine.

John - crazy idea, try seeing if it'll hop along on just one cyl. Pull the injector plugs on all but one cylinder, and see if it kicks back when just one cylinder's doing it? maybe?

I'll put on my thinkin' cap later.

[Alex Buchka]

Hey John I'm not expert at this stuff but if you can you should try scoping the VR signal to see what it looks like. You mentioned in the PM the megatunix trigger event display shows erratic results. I'd also check the coil grounds, and make sure the VR wires are separated from anything else and twisted together properly.

Maybe the sensor bracket is flexing? My rule of thumb is that you should be able to use the sensor bracket as a lift point for the engine without any doubts.

Ninja edit: Karl said to just drive push that piece of junk off a cliff

[Poik]

Since it's working with the distributor, doesn't sound like the VR sensor or circuit is the problem.

Have you checked to make sure all of the trigger wires on the coils are receiving +5v? They should go low to fire. You may have to invert your outputs to make this happen. This sounds very similar to how mine didn't run when I decided to see what would happen when I inverted the spark outputs.

And I'm sure you have it right, but just in case, the pinouts are:

A Ground
B Ground
C Trigger (+5v, low to fire)
D +12v

[benflynn]

what plugs? could the ballin ass spark be resetting things? esp w/pimp ass wires, try and open the gap way up and see if it helps

the pimp wires reset me for a long time while i tried caps everywhere

[benflynn]

oh, i see, it is cause your missing an ex nut...nut

John, post your msq... a zip file will work.

Where is your lone hall sensor vane positioned when #1 is at TDC?

Wait... did you cut out 3 of the 4 vanes or did you cut out a notch in the whole thing?

You really need the setup to look like this... There should be one full notch left in the dizzy rotor as seen in Stealth's picture. http://www.pbase.com/stealthfti/image/60446678.

[Wagner]

This might be a stupid question, but the counter weights and vacuum have been disabled from the dizzy, right? (or is it so that that dizzy never even had those?)

[linuxman51]

where'd you get that loom? /hijack

incorrect dwell settings on the coils will also cause all sorts of issues as well

[towerymt]

Originally Posted by linuxman51

where'd you get that loom? /hijack

Probably this stuff: http://cabletiesandmore.com/WrapAroundSleeving.php
Also: http://davebarton.com/blackvinyl.html

[The Aspirator]

Thanks for all the quick responses guys! Alot of great great stuff there, I really appreciate it.

Originally Posted by 245gti

I'm no expert but it looks like a lot of clearance on that VR sensor. Is it within spec in terms of proximity to the trigger wheel? The bracket looks solid enough...

Spec calls for 0.75-1mm, mine is a bit looser than that in the picture, but like Adrian said his is way farther. For a while I had it just zip tied on, then when I got the car running I tried wiggling it around, pulling it farther away, pushing it closer, no change whatsoever. So from that I've concluded that exact sensor position isn't nearly as important as I thought it would be.

Originally Posted by adrianpike

John - crazy idea, try seeing if it'll hop along on just one cyl. Pull the injector plugs on all but one cylinder, and see if it kicks back when just one cylinder's doing it? maybe?

That's not a bad idea. I tried pulling two plug wires and it did the same thing. I think I pulled 1/3, no dice, then I pulled 2/4, no dice.

Originally Posted by Alex Buchka

Hey John I'm not expert at this stuff but if you can you should try scoping the VR signal to see what it looks like. You mentioned in the PM the megatunix trigger event display shows erratic results. I'd also check the coil grounds, and make sure the VR wires are separated from anything else and twisted together properly.

Megatunix basically is a scope for the VR circuit, which is very handy. Later in this post I'll have a section on Megatunix and post what my logs look like. Coil grounds should be good, these coils have two grounds for each one and I grounded all 8 to the same block (which gets a 12ga wire from the battery). Okay okay, just to be SURE I'll go out now and measure resistance for each ground pin for the coils. Ignition off, each of the 8 pins has .4 ohms resistance to the battery, pretty much nothing. Ignition on, each one has 29.5 ohms resistance. Not sure why the change since MS is really the only thing that was also drawing ground power from the same location.

The VR wires go through a 2 wire shielded cable from the sensor to under the dash where there's a 12 pin plug, 3 of these pins are VR+ VR- and VR shield. The dizzy wires do the same thing. Then I continue to shield them individually all the way to my DB25 connector. So the only time they're not shielded is at that 12 pin connector, which is under the dash. In the second picture in my first post you can see my VR wires continuing to the board, they're the tan and black wires twisted together (just above orange/white). Notice that they're not shielded within the case. But again, the car runs perfectly right now using the VR sensor. The dizzy is plugged in and doing its thing too, just that MS currently doesn't care.

Originally Posted by Alex Buchka

Maybe the sensor bracket is flexing? My rule of thumb is that you should be able to use the sensor bracket as a lift point for the engine without any doubts.

Here's my bracket, not purdy at all but it's not going anywhere.

Originally Posted by Poik

Have you checked to make sure all of the trigger wires on the coils are receiving +5v? They should go low to fire. You may have to invert your outputs to make this happen. This sounds very similar to how mine didn't run when I decided to see what would happen when I inverted the spark outputs.

And I'm sure you have it right, but just in case, the pinouts are:

A Ground
B Ground
C Trigger (+5v, low to fire)
D +12v

Okay, either you're wrong, I'm wrong, or we're both right but require different wiring. A/B/D are right, but C (trigger) outputs a (-) signal for me. I can shove an LED between C and D and it'll light up, it goes brighter during an ignition event. My 139 module also requires a ground signal to fire off (if I tap the 139 trigger wire to ground it'll fire), so right now the 139 trigger wire plugs right into pin C of #1 LS1 coil.

Ohh and I've tried both inverted and non-inverted, the only change is that my timing moves around by like 60*. I did a LOT of research on this with regards to LS1 coils. Jutny is currently bombing around on these LS1 coils in wasted spark with NON-inverted. From what I've read, you only need to run INVERTED if you're using the VB921 ignitors, otherwise they'll explode. Since our LS1 coils have built in ignitors I've read that output should be non-inverted. I've tried both and the coils still seem to work, and they've never gotten hotter than barely being able to feel the tiniest warmth from them.

I mean, for spark outputs MS spits out a ground signal to fire, right? We might be onto something here though, because everything works fine till I try to use these coils. I'm using LED 17, 18, 19 and spark output D. Here's a picture of my circuitry. Can someone confirm that I have the firing order and pinouts correct here?

Originally Posted by benflynn

what plugs? could the ballin ass spark be resetting things? esp w/pimp ass wires, try and open the gap way up and see if it helps
oh, i see, it is cause your missing an ex nut...nut

OMG I can't believe I forgot that exhaust nut! Ohhh noes . Right now I'm running non resistor BP6ES plugs, I've got some resistor ones that I fouled up during this process, it's worth a shot throwing them in.

Originally Posted by 740ATL

John, post your msq... a zip file will work.

Sure thing, first one is my coil-on-plug settings, second one is my running VR+dizzy cap settings:
http://www.cravingboost.com/cars/Joh...-08-08-cop.zip
http://www.cravingboost.com/cars/Joh...8-08-dizzy.zip

Originally Posted by Awesome Mike

Where is your lone hall sensor vane positioned when #1 is at TDC?

I tried everywhere, literally no change. But as you've said many times the single vane is supposed to rotate into the hall sensor just past TDC, meaning no vane in sensor at TDC.

Originally Posted by 740EhTeeEl

Wait... did you cut out 3 of the 4 vanes or did you cut out a notch in the whole thing?

That picture sucks, here's a better one. I lopped off 3 vanes, leaving just one left. I took a sharpie and drew a huge fat line on top of the single remaining tooth just so that I could easily watch it during rotation, and it shows up real well with the timing light.

Originally Posted by 740ATLizzlefoshizzle

You really need the setup to look like this... There should be one full notch left in the dizzy rotor as seen in Stealth's picture. http://www.pbase.com/stealthfti/image/60446678.

Speaking of the volvo god, he says that the lone tooth should be directly in the middle of the hall sensor during TDC, why different than what you suggest?

Originally Posted by Wagner

This might be a stupid question, but the counter weights and vacuum have been disabled from the dizzy, right? (or is it so that that dizzy never even had those?)

No stupid questions in this thread! No counterweights in an LH2.2 hall sensor dizzy, I think only the older K-jet ones.

Originally Posted by linuxman51

where'd you get that loom? /hijack

It's called TechFlex (linky), I bought a whole bunch of it from an awesome local electronics shop. It's cheap enough, maybe $0.30/ft or something, comes in all different sizes and colors. Black looks the best by FAR. It's not quite like what Towery posted, his has velcro on it. That'd be waaay easier to put on, but also alot bulkier and doesn't have quite the same minimalist look to it. The trickiest part is that you really have to plan your wiring out before hand, but boy ohh boy does it ever clean things up. I love the stuff. For sealing up the ends buy the heat shrink that has the glue inside, this stuff frays bad if you don't seal the ends well.

Originally Posted by linuxman51

incorrect dwell settings on the coils will also cause all sorts of issues as well

I mostly tried 3.0 cranking and 2.3 running, but I also tried everything from 1.0 cranking to 6.0 cranking, no change.

Megatunix Trigger Logger:
Megatunix is a neat little program, but for the most part it just seems like some guy hates windows so much that he went ahead and wrote his own version of MegaTune in a Linux platform (I don't know the first thing about linux though). It is laid out much differently and has some neat features, that's for sure. The Trigger Logger is the best tool in that program, but man did I ever have to dig deep to learn how it worked! It's supposed to count teeth and display them in a visual format, simple right? So during cranking this is the first log that it spits out, and I had NO idea how to read the damn thing...:


I thought it was supposed to count 36 teeth, and somehow obviously show you where the missing tooth was. Well it turns out that it does do that, just not that accurately during cranking... Here are a bunch of different screenshots of my Tooth Logs, hopefully they explain themselves well enough.






Phew, what a post, been working on it for hours!

John

John,

Much better pic of the dizzy... that's how the vane should look... after taking a 2nd peek, it looks like you used a sharpie to darken it in, thus I though you'd cut it out.

haven't read the whole post, but no, the vane should not be in the middle of the actual sensor with #1 TDC... this is what worked for me, and what was echoed by jsmcortina over at msefi... the vane should be a bit before (and not in) the sensor when #1 is at TDC. It took me a while to figure that one out.

... will continue reading the rest of your thread.

John, 2nd thing quick... when doing 2nd trigger, you need to double your "wheel decoder base teeth" from 36 to 72... may need to chance your trigger settings too... what tooth is under the VR when #1 is at TDC?

[The Aspirator]

REALLY??? Nobody told me that. I noticed that yours were doubled but I had no idea why, but since you're the only person I know of that's doing sequential, it really makes sense! Damn, I'll have to do that for sure!!!

Still doesn't explain da funk when running wasted spark...

John, what tooth of teh 36-1 is under teh VR at TDC?

Ok John,

assuming you've got tooth 9 under the VR when #1 is at TDC, you need to change your trigger settings to the following.

Make sure before you retry this that the hall sensor vane is corrected and moved just before the sensor when #1 is at TDC.

1st, change wheel decoder teeth to 72.... then change everything else to read:

Trig A 3
Return A 8
Trig B 21
Return B 26
Trig C 39
Return C 44
Trig D 57
Return D 62

Here's teh rationale...

your first trigger is where your first tooth is, minus the number of teeth equating to your trigger angle... you have a TA of 60, so with a 36-1 wheel, this means 6 teeth (10degrees per tooth). So your Trigger A will be 9-6=3. To get your trigger B, you add 180degrees of crank rotation which is equal to 18 teeth. (180degrees/10degree per tooth =18)... so Trigger B becomes 21... then 39, then 57, etc....

Trigger return is found by taking the teeth at TDC, then subtracting the # of teeth equal to your static timing (you have 10degrees). So this means subtact 1 tooth. Trigger return A becomes 9-1=8. for Trig return B, add 180deg of crank rotation, or 18 teeth, 8+18=26.... then 44, then 62.

[Poik]

Originally Posted by The Aspirator

Okay, either you're wrong, I'm wrong, or we're both right but require different wiring. A/B/D are right, but C (trigger) outputs a (-) signal for me. I can shove an LED between C and D and it'll light up, it goes brighter during an ignition event. My 139 module also requires a ground signal to fire off (if I tap the 139 trigger wire to ground it'll fire), so right now the 139 trigger wire plugs right into pin C of #1 LS1 coil.

Sounds like we have different wiring. I did not remove my LEDs like you did when installing the pullups for the spark outputs, not sure, but that may be the difference. If I stuck an LED between C and D on mine I would expect it to light up because there should be a 7v voltage difference (+12v - +5v), and when it gets triggered (goes low to 0v) it should have a 12v voltage difference (+12v - 0v) and then get brighter. Sounds like you have it hooked up right and this isn't the problem. Looks like 740ATL is on to something though...

[benflynn]

trigger going low and going ground can be the same thing right?

John, you're killing me with suspense here....

[Poik]

He's probably out drifting around by now..

[Alex Buchka]

He probably went into overdrift. We wont hear from him in five years.

[The Aspirator]

Haha I overdrifted into the land of dynosaurs! Haha, get it, dyno! I crack myself up. And Poik, no drifting cuz of these damn studded snow tires you sold me. I've got scratch marks all up and down my driveway .

Sorry about the suspense, had dinner. Tooth 9 is under VR at TDC. I'm gonna run out now and try those new settings, could do the trick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111 You rock Mike, it makes sense now that I'd have to double my wheel settings, duhh, crank spins at double cam speed so it'll read 72 teeth before being reset by the cam trigger. Maybe with my settings it was trying to fire things off twice as fast?

Alright, lets do this.....

John those settings I gave you may not be correct... it all depends on what tooth is under the VR when #1 is at TDC... I assumed tooth #9.

get that and we can modify as necessary.

[The Aspirator]

It is 9 so the settings should be right. Got it all set up again and started cranking with no fuel, just to watch the timing light. Light on #1 gets me perfect timing for the first maybe 5 flashes, then it goes to like 40-60* advanced for a few flashes, then all over the place. Maybe all it needs is 5 cranks to get started then it'll run? It's definitely different now with the new settings, now it flashes once every two revolutions whereas before it was a steady flash flash flash flash every crank revolution.

Gettin there. With the light on #2 it seems to be flashing at TDC as well.....